by Liz Braswell
The four Street Rats watched as, in the distance, more and more squadrons of slow-moving flying soldiers assembled themselves over the city.
“As I said, that foolish genie really doesn’t know everything. I have now completely broken one of the three laws of magic and learned how to bring back the dead. Permanently. Under my control. Every time one of my ranks falls, he is replaced. Every time one of your ranks falls, he adds to my army. Death is my friend in the war for Agrabah.”
Morgiana muttered something in the language of her mother.
“Street Rats. Jasmine.” Jafar’s voice became less playful and more businesslike. “Even if you manage to avoid my army, you would still do well to turn yourselves in by dawn tomorrow.”
“Never!” Jasmine shouted to the sky. “We’d rather—”
But Aladdin touched her on the arm and pointed.
A great swirling cone of sand lifted up from the desert like a tornado. Unlike a tornado, it was broad and feathery at the edges. Sand danced around within the invisible wind in unnatural jerking motions. Suddenly, it made a picture:
A giant hourglass, sand pouring slowly through it. In the bottom were Maruf, Shirin, and Ahmed, desperately and silently slamming on the glass. Trying to get out.
Duban made a noise in his throat, a strangled cry.
“By sunrise tomorrow this little family of Street Rats will be dead. No great loss, I think. But if you actually bother to care about anyone besides your own worthless selves, you will turn yourselves in before the first light of day.”
And then, without a word or noise or lingering echo, Jafar’s voice just cut off. The sand that made up the image in the sky fell like rain.
“He has defeated us without drawing a single blade,” Morgiana said bleakly. “Duban, we will turn ourselves in. We can’t let them die this way.”
“And then what?” Aladdin asked, turning on her. “Do you really think that will change anything? Do you think he will just let them go, like he promised? And if he did, forgetting for just a moment what he would do to us then—I’m thinking a quick execution and then four more ghouls for his army—what’s going to happen to Agrabah? What’s going to happen to everyone else? There won’t be anyone left to fight him. The city will be his, one giant plaything for him to experiment on. And after that, who knows? The world?”
“I don’t care about the world,” Duban interrupted. “All I care about is my dad and my niece and my nephew.”
Jasmine started to say something. Duban held up his hand.
“But you’re right. Jafar has no reason to let them go. He has all the cards. And if they lived, I wouldn’t want them to live in the sort of world he is building.”
“But what do we do?” Morgiana demanded.
“What we should have done from the beginning,” Aladdin said. “Grab the lamp. Rescue the family. Get the genie to undo all this and everyone lives happily ever after.”
“Oh, is that all?” Morgiana rolled her eyes.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Jasmine asked, eyes hardening as she thought about it. “He didn’t call us traitors or revolutionaries or insurrectionists. He said, ‘Death is my friend in the war for Agrabah.’ He thinks it’s a fair fight. He thinks we’re at war. As equals.
“Well, if it’s war he wants…we’ll give him one!”
THE FOUR WALKED BACK through the streets of Agrabah in silence. Any initial enthusiasm they had felt from declaring war on Jafar ebbed away as the reality of the situation sank in. There wasn’t a hint of the sorcerer’s presence in the city as they went; he was silent now, his voice withdrawn back to the palace while he waited for them to make a decision. There was something anticlimactic about it.
Agrabah itself was full of tense and strange energy: although it was now fully evening and the Peacekeeping Patrols were active, people buzzed behind their closed doors—or sometimes opened them a crack to trade opinions with a neighbor across the way, also behind a cracked door.
But no one could avoid noticing the corpses that were occasionally sprawled in the alleys, left there as a warning.
Morgiana was holding Duban’s hand, squeezing it and murmuring sympathetic and supportive words, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stared at the dirt or his own feet as he plodded along.
When they were back in Aladdin’s hideout with the door safely shut, Morgiana was the first one to speak.
“Kidnapping children?” she said, dumbfounded. “And old men? I mean…you’re the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Just…why?”
“‘Magic is only as great as the mind controlling it,’” Jasmine said, quoting something she had read somewhere. She thought about the genie’s story involving a previous master who had wanted a larger flock of goats. A happy man who was mostly happy with the life he already had. “Jafar is even sicker than I thought.”
Duban silently collapsed onto the floor and covered his face with his hands.
“I’m so sorry,” Aladdin said, kneeling down and putting his arm around his friend’s shoulders. Duban looked up and gave a weak smile of appreciation but didn’t meet Aladdin’s gaze. “We’ll get them back, I promise.”
“And I’m sorry for not completely believing you, Jasmine,” Morgiana added. “I really thought the whole thing about the army of undead was just…I don’t know…a little…”
“You thought I exaggerated it to get you to help?” Jasmine asked, not unkindly.
“Well, come on.…It’s like a story some grandmother would tell you. But those…ghouls…in the sky…Rasoul himself…” The thief shuddered.
“We need to come up with a plan, a war strategy,” Jasmine said, slamming one fist into another. “We need to organize.…”
Duban finally spoke, his voice bitter: “It’s all very well to declare war on Jafar. But what can we actually do? We’re thieves, Jasmine. Not soldiers. You would need the greatest army Agrabah had ever seen to storm the palace and rescue my family.”
Aladdin grew worried at the desolate tone of his friend’s voice. There was no light in Duban’s eyes, no hope at all.
“But that’s what you and Morgiana gave me,” Jasmine said. “A Street Rat army.”
“They don’t have swords! If they did, they wouldn’t know how to use them. Most are just kids.”
Morgiana stepped between the two. Her back was toward Duban, but it was more like she was protecting than ignoring him.
“We do have an army,” she said. “But it’s an army skilled in moving silently, picking locks, stealing things. We could probably lift every magic book out of the palace right under Jafar’s nose, but I’m not sure that’s going to help anymore.”
“I don’t know what anyone can do against that monster now,” Duban murmured. “He is the very incarnation of powerful, limitless evil.”
“We are going to save your family,” Jasmine promised. “We just need to figure out how. That’s what we’re doing right now.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to figure that out,” Morgiana said, looking nervously out the window at a sky that was already deepening from the gray of early twilight to the dark blue of early night.
Jasmine and Duban also turned to glance out the window, breaking off from their escalating fight. Duban swore under his breath. Jasmine tried to look strong but couldn’t hide the dismay in her eyes.
“Wait,” Aladdin said suddenly, breaking the silence. “You’re both right. And you’re both looking at this backwards.”
The three looked at him, confused.
He leapt up, the beginnings of a smile on his face.
“Jasmine, you said that magic is only as great as the mind that controls it. We’ve already seen that Jafar isn’t thinking like a completely sane man—what with chasing you and taking the children as hostages. So we need to ask ourselves this: what is Jafar expecting us to do?”
“Go to war against him,” Morgiana said, a little irritably. “You heard him, Aladdin. We all did. And we’re planning to. But we need more time. If w
e tried now…”
“We would do it pretty terribly, as Duban said. But proudly and energetically,” he added quickly, before Jasmine could interrupt. “Now, what are we actually good at?”
“Stealing things,” Morgiana snapped. “Aladdin, are you an idiot? Haven’t you been listening? What does—”
“So,” Aladdin continued, putting a finger on her mouth to shut her up, “we wage war on Jafar—big, obvious, ugly war—while some of us steal Maruf and Shirin and Ahmed. And the lamp. And the book. And anything else that seems useful. Right out from under his nose.”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
Jasmine’s eyes went from confused to clear as she thought about his plan. A smile began to form at the edges of her lips.
Even Morgiana seemed impressed.
“That’s not half bad,” she said grudgingly. “War is a pretty spectacular diversionary tactic. There’s no way he could ignore it. Add some carefully set fires…”
“Maybe one in the palace itself,” Duban said, unable to help himself. Strategizing complicated heists was his specialty. “To add to the confusion.”
“Brilliant!” Jasmine said, clapping her hands together. “This could work!”
“But what about Jafar himself, bright eyes?” Morgiana demanded. “We’re going to come face-to-face with him at some point. I can’t imagine he keeps that lamp or book out of reach, much less out of sight. What do we do to prepare for that?”
“All of his physical magic, offensive magic, seems to take time and concentration,” Aladdin said, thinking back to the Square of the Sailor. “I’ll bet in close combat he’ll have a distinct disadvantage.”
“You’re betting your life on that,” Morgiana said archly. “And what about knowing things about us and our plans? Ahead of time? Can’t sorcerers do that kind of thing?”
“The future is a realm…unavailable to him,” Jasmine said uneasily. “The only time he managed to foresee anything, it involved complicated blood magic—and the sacrifice of the one dearest to him.”
“Who was Jafar close to?” Aladdin couldn’t help asking. “He didn’t love anyone.”
“Oh, holy heavens,” Morgiana said, suddenly getting it. “The parrot. His stupid parrot. That’s why it’s on all his coins and flags and everything. That was the one dearest to him. What a complete lunatic.”
Aladdin shuddered. Before Jasmine, Abu was certainly the one closest to him…he could almost sort of see it from Jafar’s twisted perspective. Unlike Jafar, however, nothing in the world would induce him to kill Abu.
“Let’s get back to the plan,” he said quickly. “So if it comes to battle directly with the sorcerer, it will be ugly, and we will try to avoid that. The plan is to distract him and his undead troops and those still loyal to him with a direct assault on the palace itself, while the best thieves—”
“Us three,” Morgiana interrupted.
“Four,” Jasmine corrected.
“Three. You’re not a thief,” Aladdin pointed out. “We’ll sneak in the back. Each of us will have a task.…I’ll grab the lamp.”
“I’ll grab the book. You’ll free Maruf and the kids?” Morgiana asked Duban.
His face was unreadable.
“I think we should switch,” he said slowly. “I’ll…take the book. You free my family.”
“Why?” Morgiana asked, confused. “Don’t you want to be the one who saves them?”
“I—I won’t be thinking clearly,” Duban said. He clenched and unclenched his fists nervously. “It’s bad tactics. I’d be a liability to the team, putting my family before the rest of our objectives. Besides, I trust you.”
Morgiana gave a funny smile: it was surprise and sweetness and perhaps the revelation of something deeper.
Duban gave her not quite a smile back, but his face brightened a little.
“All right, this sounds like it’s the beginnings of a strategy,” Jasmine said. “But even though I’m not a thief, I could…be useful in distracting Jafar, or something.…”
“Jasmine,” Aladdin said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Am I trying to keep you out of harm’s way because I care about you? Absolutely. But your task is also just as important as ours. You’re the face of the revolt. People—your leaders, your army, your people, need to see you. Need to know that you are the one telling them what to do. You need to stay here and organize the assault on the palace. Who else is going to do it?”
Jasmine didn’t say anything. Her hands fluttered for just a moment.
“You’re…right. This is my first job as sultana. I just…I’m worried about you guys. And I’ve lived in the palace. And dealt with Jafar. I want to be there and make sure everyone’s all right. I just feel like I could have a greater role.…”
Morgiana smiled and looked like she was almost going to touch Jasmine, squeeze her shoulder or something. “We’ll be fine, Jasmine. We have to be.”
She might have said other things, but Aladdin had noticed that once again a shadow had fallen over Duban’s face. He had gone over to the broken terrace and was looking out at the sky and the palace.
“We will rescue them,” Aladdin said quietly, coming up behind his old friend.
“Sure, Aladdin,” Duban said. He didn’t say it sarcastically or patronizingly, yet there was something not entirely honest about his tone.
“Duban…”
The thief shook his head.
“I thought Shirin and Ahmed would be safe once their father was gone. I thought they would be safe, if hungry, with my dad. I thought they would be safer still surrounded by thieves and…tigers. Aladdin—” Duban suddenly turned to look at his friend, his eyes wide and searching. “We need to end this. This insanity that has taken over Agrabah. We need to end it now. By any means.”
“Yes, Duban. I agree,” Aladdin said slowly. There was something…off about the usually most levelheaded of the Street Rats. “That’s what we’re going to do. Rescue your family and defeat Jafar.”
Jasmine and Morgiana had finished their discussion and were quietly waiting for Aladdin and Duban. Jasmine raised an eyebrow at Aladdin. Aladdin shrugged—what could be said? The boy’s father, niece, and nephew were being held captive by a madman sworn to kill them.
Aloud Jasmine said: “All right, let’s go over the plan one more time among ourselves. Morgiana’s had a couple of brilliant ideas we should discuss. Then we’ll summon the various faction leaders we can count on and have a war council. Quickly.”
“But not here,” Morgiana said. “And not at our old HQ.”
“The bread warehouse,” Aladdin suggested. “The…baguette warehouse,” he added, tossing a hopeful grin at Duban.
But his friend did not return it, only looked out over the city and put his hand on his dagger.
OUTSIDE A DUSTY old bread warehouse, defying curfew, citizens from all walks of life waited for orders. They milled around anxiously, keeping an eye out for Peacekeeping Patrols. They spoke in low voices, polished their knives, and readied their torches.
Inside the warehouse, Duban, Morgiana, Jasmine, and Aladdin stood on one side of a giant, crooked table, where dim lanterns barely illuminated the hastily drawn map of Agrabah.
On the other side of the table were the de facto captains of the Street Rat army.
Some of the faces were old and well known, but many were new. Many were not even originally Street Rats. Representing the jewelers and other high-end guilds was Amur. They supplied the resistance with beautiful—but deadly—weapons like gem-encrusted daggers. Representing the disaffected guards, soldiers, and ex-military was the general Sohrab. Speaking for the different religious colleges was Khosrow, who brought wisdom, extraordinary intelligence, and a hundred acolytes furious that their studies had been suspended. Representing the Alchemaics was the scarred and one-eyed Kimiya, who despite her frightening appearance greeted everyone with a friendly, lopsided smile. She brought incendiaries.
A surprising number of people came representing no one bu
t themselves—angry young men and women upset with what Jafar had done to their city. They brought whatever they had: weapons, food, fists.
It was the most diverse crowd Aladdin had ever seen outside of a holiday market day.
“The basic plan is quite simple,” Jasmine said. “Aladdin and a couple of handpicked thieves will sneak into the palace—not from the back, as Jafar might expect, but from the side, here, where it’s easiest to get into the Princess Courtyard.” She indicated the place with a tap of a stick. “It would make sense for Jafar to keep the genie’s lamp—as well as the genie and the other prisoners—in his secret dungeon, here.” She indicated the place Aladdin had “escaped” from with another tap. “No doubt that place is now locked up and trapped like the devil’s own treasure room. We don’t think the lamp is there, anyway—the sand image in the sky yesterday had a few unintentional details in it, like the tail end of a tapestry that I know for a fact hangs in the throne room. Which makes sense—Jafar probably wants to keep genie, the lamp, and Maruf and the children very close to him. And Jafar likes keeping very close to the throne room. It’s important to him that he seem like a sultan, and he sits on the throne whenever he can.
“They free Maruf and the children, grab the book, grab the lamp, and free the genie. We then overthrow Jafar by wishing all of his powers away.”
“So that’s it,” a teenage thief said sarcastically. “You’re just going to march up to the palace through a city filled with ghouls, sneak into the most heavily guarded room, and steal something out from under the nose of the sorcerer.”
“That is the basic plan,” Jasmine said patiently. “You’re going to help us with the other part. Given what he said yesterday, Jafar will be expecting us to do something warlike—probably a direct frontal assault on the palace itself. So we will give him that, using the siege to distract him while the thieves get done what they need to.”
There were nods and murmurs of agreement at the cleverness of the plan.
“But the sorcerer is so powerful! He can summon bread and gold from the sky!” Hazan, the little Street Rat, piped up worriedly.
